


where the skyline meets the sea; or, seeking a threesome for the end of the world

by junkeroni (hotdammneron)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2012-2013 NHL Lockout, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, Pre-Apocalypse, defining love in terms of desperation and desire, dirt minds worm alike, dynamo legend, hatesex of the resentful and hesitantly loving variety, remember in 2012 when everyone thought the world was going to end?, surrealist sex dreams: the nicke backstrom story, there’s no “polyamory negotiations” when the worlds ending, vague allusions to the concept of hockey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdammneron/pseuds/junkeroni
Summary: Some nights he wondered what was more selfish, wanting Alex for himself, or wanting everything, wanting more than anything to lay claim on Alex, on Sasha, on everything he can’t have.There are rules Nicke can’t understand, but sharing doesn’t seem selfish at three in the morning.





	where the skyline meets the sea; or, seeking a threesome for the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pr_scatterbrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/gifts).



> dear pr_scatterbrain,
> 
> it's been great writing for you, i'm a big fan of your work + i hope you enjoy this moderate to severe feelings'fest lockout fic that got caught up in the apocalypse along the way. sometimes, you set out to write one thing, and then you remember the 2012 mayan calendar apocalypse, and it's all downhill from there. hopefully not too downhill. please enjoy.
> 
> this fic tried to kill me and made me late to work four times.
> 
> title taken from hotel by kita alexander
> 
> EDIT: hey, it’s me, my Twitter is mollstermash (tumblr is mollstermash/hockey tumblr is capitls/junkeroni). come yell at me. 
> 
> thanks to the whole witch frat for calling me a bastard along the way. u guys are my apocalypse rager dream team. thanks to my mom for answering my questions about the 2012 apocalypse without asking why. 
> 
> playlist for this that I forgot to post: https://open.spotify.com/user/plumbucky/playlist/0GkyzFQZibWdFVRYHgLbE7?si=5SxBBv3xT6qSzNIiKMdydg
> 
> I love all of u goodnight

_Tell me we’re dead and I’ll love you even more._

_Richard Siken, The Torn-Up Road._

_You dangle on the leash of your own longing._ _Your need grows teeth._

_____ _

____

_Margaret Atwood, Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein._

 

“Good morning Nicky, are you coming to Moscow today?” Alex says, voice crackling over the phone. Nicke doesn’t want to smile at that, but, well. Fuck.

“You do know I have a life outside of you, right?” Nicke asks, feigning irritation as always, glancing at the timer on the microwave.

“You do? I thought the world revolved around me,” Alex says, and Nicke wishes they were together again, that this lockout never split them, curse his sentimental heart. He wishes there was something he could do to not seem desperate, overly attached in missing Alex. “What about if I pay?”

Nicke sighs, even if he doesn’t mean it. “You know I’m busy, Alex. I can’t just drop everything to move to Moscow, to be with you.”

“What are you doing right now?” Alex says, as if Nicke would tell him anything, which - he wouldn’t like to admit that he would.

Nicke looks at the microwave across the kitchen, the hot pocket abandoned inside. Fuck diet plans, if they wanted him to stay in peak physical condition they shouldn’t have shut down the league. “Bank stuff,” he lies, clearing his throat after too long. 

“Bullshit,” Alex says, of course. “I know you have an accountant. Come to Moscow.”

The click of Alex hanging up makes Nicke hate him, if only for a moment. It only ever lasts a moment.

 

So what if Nicke has his bags packed already? 

 

He’d have to be an idiot to think there were no holes in the idea. It’s entirely foolish, truly, to see the man he’s been - well, something, he’s been something with Alex for six years. Foolish to take the closest thing to the love of his life and, what, move to another country just to see him? Just for a moment’s reprieve from loneliness? It’s ridiculous. It’s desperation to a degree Nicke aims to surpass in all things. He’d like to think he stopped thinking with his dick in juniors, but. 

Nobody’s been brave enough to call Nicke a fool to his face, but he is. 

His flight leaves at nine at night on a Saturday, and he doesn’t think about any of it until it’s too late, when he’s halfway over the Baltic listening to some entirely uninspiring audiobook. It’s stupid, it’s foolish, it’s close to midnight and there’s no turning back. 

 

Alex picks him up at the airport, of course he does. It’s excessive, everything but the chauffeur with a handwritten sign, and he knows Alex would’ve done it if Alex didn’t love him so much. And that’s it’s own thing. Alex loves him. Nicke knows that. 

He wishes he didn’t - that Alex didn’t love him, that he didn’t know that Alex loved him. 

He wishes he didn’t love him too.

The drive to Alex’s house from the airport could be ten minutes, could be an hour for all Nicke can focus. The street signs are all Cyrillic, obviously, and he focuses on watching buildings pass. It’s a lot of high ceilings, paved streets. He remembers being a child, wanting to be a carpenter, an architect, a hockey player. Wanting to be everything. It’s always funny how these things work out, the limitations of a single lifetime. Maybe in another world.

Maybe in another world, he’d be a carpenter, he’d do odd jobs back home, Germany, Russia, wherever. Maybe he’d meet all the same people, leading different lives, so different but so similar. Maybe he’d see Alex. Maybe -

Nicke snaps out of it as Alex turns - too fast, too reckless, too much - onto a side street, pulls into a driveway with a gate. He watches Alex’s hands on the steering wheel, thinks about feeling his palms, his fingertips. He needs some sleep. 

And Alex - Alex, Alex. A life filled with Alex. He turns the key in the ignition, clicks his seatbelt undone, opens the door. Nicke keeps his eyes on Alex’s hands. It’s normal. 

Alex carries Nicke’s bag to the house, up the steps, and Nicke stays in the car. It’s jetlag, it’s travel exhaustion, it’s nothing new. 

 

Nicke dreams, and it’s normal.

He dreams, and he dreams of hands, Alex’s hands, gripping the steering wheel, hands on the small of his back, hands on his shoulders on the bench, hands connected to arms connected to a body, connected to his body. Nicke’s body, Alex’s hands. His own hands. The long faded, worn, indistinct line where one body stops, another body begins.

Nicke dreams, and it’s not normal.

Nicke dreams, and maybe it’s a new kind of normal.

 

“Good morning sunshine,” Alex says from the kitchen counter in the morning, afternoon, evening, fuck, whatever. Nicke flips him off, makes a beeline for the coffee pot. Alex has the brand he likes. Nicke’s too tired to think about that

Too tired to think about Alex calling him, Alex getting his house ready for Nicke, Alex wanting him here, so far as Alex wanting him. 

Coffee helps. 

“You gonna give me a tour?” Nicke asks after his first cup, marginally more human, as close to a person as he can get most days. “I only know where the guest room is. I only found the kitchen because you cook loud.”

Alex shoots Nicke a look while he scrapes the spatula across the bottom of the pan, cooking even louder like he’s trying to prove a point, and Nicke returns the look. Doesn’t look at him for too long. 

“Whatever,” Nicke continues, too hungry to press his luck. 

“Did you sleep alright?” Alex asks, and Nicke shakes his head, almost panics at Alex’s inquisitive look. 

There are a thousand things Nicke could say; I can’t sleep because your guest room sheets smell like you, I can’t sleep because I stay up thinking about you, I can’t just sit in your living room in your empty house and watch you take up all this space and not want you to touch me. He settles for a shrug. “Jetlag, I guess,” he says, sipping his coffee to change the subject. 

 

It’s not like it’s a particularly new fixation. 

Nicke remembers - what was it, five years ago now? Six? It’s strange how time feels distant, separate from the rest of the world, passing too fast, too slow, and maybe everything is disparate and too much and too little all at once. 

Six years. So they’ve been together that long. It’s not like he’s new to this, to the wanting.

Six years ago, Alex’s voice was shaky as he stumbled over rough English calling Nicke to the stage. Six years ago, Nicke was terrified at the podium shaking Alex’s hand, pulling that hideous jersey over his head, sweating goddamn bullets through his draft suit. 

Everyone dreams about the draft as a little kid, the bright lights and flashy smiles and signing entry contracts with teams you’ve always loved. Nobody dreams about what comes after. Not the hockey, no, everyone dreams about the hockey. It’s what comes after the draft, before the season, nineteen and drunk biting your new teammate’s shoulder in the hotel sauna, tugging at the towel around his waist, wanting more, needing more.

There’s the thrill of the draft, the adrenaline, it all has to culminate in something, right?

Nicke tries not to think about that night, Alex’s hands on his at the draft, Alex’s hands in his hair. The heat of the steam, the heat of his body, burning to the touch, Alex, close to heaven as he was to hell, both in good measure. 

Six years ago, Nicke pulled the towel out from under Alex to wipe his own face off, tucked his hair behind his ears, always nervous. Six years ago, he walked back to his room with shaking hands, left Alex in the steam room and didn’t talk to him for nearly a year.

And then, then there was Sasha, all Sasha, everything Sasha. 

It’s not like anything ever happened, but. Maybe it should have. 

 

“The world’s gonna end,” Alex says at dinner, casual, always so casual. They go to this fucking fancy dinner, fucking fancy restaurant, and Alex is wearing this god awful shirt, of course he is. Hunt or be Hunted, Christ alive. Here he is, rhinestones on his shirt, holes in his jeans, twenty dollar appetisers and bringing up the apocalypse like it’s the weather. It’s so typical. Nicke can’t even fathom the sort of things he wants to do to him. 

It’s November, and the longing only gets worse.

“Sasha’s coming to visit,” Alex goes on like a fucking steamroller, like it’s normal, like any of this is normal.

“Oh? Is that the end of the world then?” Nicke asks drily, stealing a forkful of Alex’s pasta. 

“Don’t be rude, Nicky. Sasha’s only a little bit of a demon, not some horseman of the apocalypse.”

“As if you expect me to believe that,” Nicke says. “You say Sasha’s coming to town, you say the world’s ending. You think that’s not connected?”

Alex flicks a balled up straw wrapper across the table. Nicke deserves it. “Sasha in Moscow isn’t a recipe for disaster. He’s coming over for the end of the world.”

“How wonderful, one last visit before we all die?”

“Of course, can’t just die without seeing my favorite teammate,” Alex says, grinning. “Finish your dinner before it gets cold.”

 

The team’s - the team’s great, god. It feels good to win for once. 

“Fucking beautiful!” Komarov yells, and that, that Nicke knows in any language. All that joy, the rush of getting one little piece closer to winning. 

The puck goes straight to Alex’s tape like clockwork, like always. Puck to the tape to the back of the net, Alex slamming into Nicke’s side, both of them into the boards together like god’s perfect collision, but Nicke knows god has nothing to do with it. It’s chemistry, the perfect fucking reaction. They’re just that good, him and Alex. Always have been, always will be. 

It’s a win, so they go out, so they get drunk. All those stupid jokes don’t lie about Russians and their liquor, Nicke thinks four shots in, too early in the night. 

They go out, and Nicke doesn’t speak Russian, doesn’t understand jack shit that the boys are saying all grouped around their table in the back room. But Alex talks to him, makes a concerted effort to translate, checks in on him, so fucking considerate. Nicke wants to give him something in return for all the effort, all the energy that Alex puts into him, paying attention, always taking care of him. Nicke wants to pay him back, wants to touch him, wants to take him back into the likely gross bathroom of the bar they’re at and -

Nicke doesn’t want to think about everything he wants, everything he wants with Alex.

He sips his drink, doesn’t think about it too much when Alex puts a hand on his forearm, making sure he has his full attention, as if Nicke can ever get distracted from Alex. As if there’s anything else as fascinating. God, it’s so much to handle.

“Can you -” Nicke asks, tapping the guy next to him on the shoulder (he thinks it’s Novak, he doesn’t fucking know, can’t think about anyone but Alex). Novak or whoever is considerate enough to understand what Nicke’s struggling to say, fuck language differences, stands up to let him out of the booth. 

Alex gives Nicke a concerned look when he gets to his feet, leaning a bit on the table as he walks out of the booth, and Nicke can’t process enough to say anything about that. He just points to the general area of the bathroom, hopes Alex gets the point, hopes Alex doesn’t get the wrong point and follow him. He can’t say what he’d do in close quarters right about now. 

The bathroom is as grimey as Nicke expected, and the lock is a bitch to work with his sweaty hands, but he works it out. He deserves a medal, really, and fuck, it’s too much, being here, being in Moscow, Moscow with Alex and new teammates and new feelings that aren’t so new anyway. 

Nicke braces himself against the bathroom sink, tries not to look at the mirror, doesn’t want to see the wanting evident on his face. It’s clear for anyone to see. He knows that much, knows there’s nothing he could do about it. And that’s - fuck, he’s a mess. 

There’s a knock on the bathroom door at some point in whatever amount of time Nicke’s locked himself in there, and he answers with what could be considered a fair amount of composure. 

“Nicky?” Alex asks from past the door and his voice is muffled, like he’s not trying to be too loud, like he’s worried about Nicke, fuck. 

And Nicke - he can’t respond to that, not from a separate room, but he can’t have Alex right here and not want to touch, not want to take everything he wants.

He opens the door anyway, because self preservation is for happier people in less apocalyptic times.

“You alright?” Alex asks as soon as the door opens, and Nicke almost bites his own tongue. It’s just Alex, same as he always is, but Nicke can’t… can’t process it, the way his shirt stretches over his arms, the concerned little crease in his forehead when Nicke doesn’t answer right away. He knows he’s blushing, knows he looks stupid, blames it on the booze, moves on. There’s a degree of difficulty with communication, but body language is universal, as cheesy as Nicke thinks that sounds, there’s the way Alex leans in, always so close, so touchy. It’s a kind of communication in itself, the one thing he knows for sure.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nicke says, doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Can I just, fuck, Alex, I need you to trust me, I need you to stop me if I’m a fucking idiot,” 

“Of course,” Alex says, so earnest, so trusting always, Nicke can’t fucking stand it. 

Nicke takes a step closer to Alex, gets his hand up against his cheekbones, tangles his fingers in Alex’s hair, and something in his brain goes haywire and he buries his face into Alex’s neck. It’s embarrassing, it’s instinctive, it’s something he can’t help but give into. It’s the pull of it, the gravitation of a body, the gravitation of Alex’s body. Always pulling, always taking, never taking enough, never everything Nicke wants, needs to give him.

“Nicky,” Alex says, breath caught in his throat and god, Nicke wants to bite the curve of his collarbone, take everything. “What are you doing?”

There’s a moment where they’re both quiet, and Nicke kisses the column of Alex’s throat. The line between give and take is a fucking mess, and Nicke can’t tell what he wants, if he wants to take all of Alex or give all of himself and maybe something about the longing is a little bit of both. It’s quiet between them, and when Nicke pulls his head away to look at Alex, to back away, to apologize for everything he’s ever done, everything he wants to do - 

Nicke tries to calculate exactly how fast he could get out of this bathroom and flee the country, fake his own death, never be seen again, and Alex kisses him. Backs him up against the sink and all but picks him up and puts him on the counter, and god, that’s something new, and Nicke can’t think about anything at all when he pulls Alex closer with his legs around his waist. Fuck running, fuck embarrassment, Nicke could live forever in this second.

Nothing’s felt this right off the ice in six years, nothing could ever compare to this, except if they were sober, if Alex didn’t just want a hookup. Maybe if Nicke didn’t have so much goddamn baggage, if the only benefit of being ‘friends with benefits’ wasn’t just the heartbreak that came along with it.

So Nicke bites Alex’s lip, grips his shoulders for dear life while they make out like idiots in a bar bathroom so far from home. And maybe Moscow would be home, if home could be where half your heart is, if home was just where you go for the end of the world. If only a concept as complicated as belonging could be so simple.

The world’s on fire and Nicke swears into Alex’s mouth, wishes he wasn’t here, wishes he wasn’t anywhere and wishes he could turn his feelings off if only for a night. The world’s ending, and there’s nothing Nicke can do about it, and the walls he had built around his desire come crumbling down weeks before everything else does. 

 

They don’t talk about it.

Nicke doesn’t know if he wishes they would. 

 

Of course, they’ve seen Sasha since the trade, since the lockout. They had games with Torpedo, games were Sasha came over afterwards, games where they went out to dinner after. They had games with Torpedo, Sasha came over, spent the night in Alex’s room. In Alex’s bed, maybe. Nicke never asked. 

There’s a certain - there’s something there, between the two of them. There’s something there that Nicke wants to know about, something he’ll never know. Sasha’s a private person, for all that Alex isn’t. 

Nicke never asked, but that’s no indication of lack of interest.

 

Sasha was always there, in his own way. He was there in the details, if Nicke had to find a category to corner Sasha’s presence into; he never took up as much space as Alex, who could even come close to that? If Alex was a king, Sasha was the parliament behind him. Always in the background setting records, never the one who the whole world cared to see. Nicke never knows if Sasha likes it that way, if he’s allowed to ask. There’s rules he knows to follow, if he doesn’t know what they are. 

Nicke doesn’t know if he misses Sasha. Doesn’t know if Sasha would miss him, even, but he comes close to feeling something between them that he’s nowhere near able to fathom. It’s the quiet moments maybe, when Sasha was there, when Alex would leave the two of them alone together, a sense of - of something. Commonality, tension, the bond built from being equal balances to Alex. Something in the quiet moments, sitting at a table in a seedy bar without a language between them, some kind of energy. Not quite electric, not quite grounded. It’s a tension, a balance, to say the least. It’s something. 

 

They pick up Sasha from the airport. Alex insists on it. Of course he does. 

Alex is halfway to bouncing on his heels with each step, all the energy of a child seeing a part-time-best-friend for the first time since summer camp, all the love. Shameless. Always shameless. It’s something Nicke wishes he didn’t love about him, but it’s not like he can help it. Neither of them can. Alex can’t help but be loved, and Nicke is helpless to do anything but love him, as if his presence, his very existence demands it. Love is inherent to the Alexander Ovechkin experience, Nicke knows better by now.

When Sasha comes through the terminal, Alex only barely holds back from tackling him to the ground. He’s on Sasha within seconds, all but shoving other passengers out of his way. They’re talking fast, all Russian, of course, everyone is. It’s Russia. That’s how it is.

Sasha comes to greet Nicke with a hug once he’s gotten Alex off of him, and he’s warm, always has run warmer than Nicke. Maybe it’s something about being from Siberia, obviously colder than Sweden. Maybe it’s just Sasha. His hand comes to the back of Nicke’s neck and he freezes, like it means anything, like it’s some kind of sign. Of course it isn’t. Sasha doesn’t work like that, except that he does, and maybe Nicke’s never gonna know if there was something there, if there could ever be. 

“I missed you,” Sasha mutters, his face pressed into the side of Nicke’s head, two inches between them making all the difference. He’s close to kissing Nicke’s temple, and Nicke wishes he would; wishes he would move away, wishes he would come closer. Just like everything Nicke feels, it’s a jumbled fucked up mess of contradictions, wanting more, wanting less, the self-loathing inherent in desire.

It’s more tender of a touch than Nicke could have imagined, more than either of them could be with Alex, unfathomable until it happened. It’s a sort of softness that comes with the shared experience of loving Alex.

“I missed you too,” Nicke says, Sasha’s thumb brushing his hairline, both of them too caught up in everything to be too embarrassed by spectacle.

Sasha takes a step back, his hand slipping from Nicke’s neck to his shoulder, and Nicke wishes he hadn’t moved. “Alex taking care of you here?” he asks, rolling the hem of Nicke’s shirt between his fingertips, nearly brushing the skin of his shoulder with every slight motion. 

It wouldn’t make sense if Nicke longed for him to touch, to press his fingers into his collarbone, trace the line of it with his fingertips.

“Of course he is,” Nicke says quietly; it feels like if he speaks too loud he’ll break it, whatever this thing is that’s built around them, a connection made from mutual wanting, prolonged separation, whatever it is. “He’s Alex. He takes care.”

Sasha nods, silent, and Alex steps in, his very presence demanding attention, never knowing it. “There’s time to whisper about me later,” he says, putting an arm around each of their shoulders. “I’m hungry, we’re getting pizza.”

When Sasha looks at Nicke, that same long-suffering-long-loving look they both carry as a default, Nicke can only smile. Pray he doesn’t give anything away with Alex’s hand on his arm and the memory of Sasha’s touch, like any of them can keep a goddamn secret from each other. 

 

It’s not like Nicke doesn’t notice. It would be impossible, really, knowing the two of them so well and not noticing - the way Sasha looks at Alex, the way he lingers. Sasha isn’t blatant, but Nicke isn’t blind. 

When Alex stretches on the couch after dinner, pale skin flashing where his shirt rides up, Sasha looks. Nicke knows how it feels, seeing all this skin on display, all of Alex out there for anyone to see. Sasha watches Alex as he speaks, and Nicke watches Sasha. It’s observational, clinical more than anything. 

He knows the feeling, the pull, the wanting. He knows how it hurts to see Alex, touch him, watch him brand everything he comes into contact with until everything is Alex and there’s no avoiding consideration of all that he is. It’s ingrained at this point, a fact of life, and Nicke thinks it’s just a side effect of prolonged exposure. Alex is the sun, Nicke and Sasha blessedly damned to be trapped in his magnetism, the gravitation of three bodies acting together and against one another all at once.

This sort of thing is always a balancing act, Nicke thinks, watching Sasha watching Alex watching The Bachelor with subtitles. It’s a fixation bordering on obsession, it’s a wanting without the factor of a taking. There’s a fine line between silent desire and action, and Nicke hasn’t crossed it in six years. Doesn’t plan on crossing it again any time soon. Maybe Sasha has, maybe Sasha will, maybe Nicke’s reading this whole thing wrong. 

There’s a chance that Sasha and Alex are fucking, of course there is. 

That doesn’t mean Nicke earned the privilege of asking.

“This show is ridiculous,” Sasha says when Alex leaves for snacks at the commercial break, a conspiratory whisper. It feels like passing notes in class, or how Nicke thinks that would feel like. 

Nicke nods, fiddles with the tacky fringe on a cushion just for something to do with his hands. It shouldn’t be strange, being alone with one of his closest friends, it’s just that it never happens, and it is strange, existing with Sasha without Alex. Being alone with Sasha is an unexplored concept that might warrant exploration. There’s no buffer, no Alex for them to split their attention to; just the two of them, and Nicke can’t help but be nervous.

Sasha mutes the TV, stretching out his leg, tucking his foot just against Nicke’s thigh. It’s easy to forget he’s a hockey player at times, with the grace he possesses; he doesn’t carry the brutality of other players Nicke knows. He moves softly, a purpose behind each motion, but nothing too sudden, nothing that goes uncalculated. Sasha could have been a dancer in another life, Nicke thinks, he could put all his beauty and elegance into something that deserves him.

There’s half a realization there, that he’s never deserved Sasha either. Nobody could, and Nicke’s been too caught up in everyone else’s feelings to realize a burning half of his own attraction. Sasha’s been there all along, watching Alex and Nicke in equal measure, and Nicke’s been so caught up in the Alex issue to realize that there’s a Sasha issue too. He’s been too distracted to realize everything he wants, too distracted to see Sasha’s body and want to touch him just as much as Alex.

It’s strange, how he’s never noticed how much he wants.

A moment passes with Sasha’s eyes on him, looking, watching as Nicke tugs on the fringe of the pillow again. Sasha is shameless in his observation, blinking slowly as Nicke shifts in his seat, tucks his hair behind his hair, conscious of every movement. 

And that’s another thing Nicke hasn’t noticed, how intense Sasha can be when his attention is directed at anyone but Alex. Nicke reaches to grab the remote, just for something to do with his hands, and Sasha tracks the motion, so still, so calculated. 

“Alex should be back in a minute,” Sasha says like a warning, like they’re doing anything they could get caught doing, and, fuck, are they, is this - 

Sasha licks his lips, leans in a fraction. Alex swears from the kitchen, probably burned his hand on the popcorn, and Nicke freezes as Sasha reaches for his face, not nervous enough to be hesitant. He’s sure of himself, Nicke knows that much. Sasha’s fingers brush his cheek, halfway to possessive and wholly distracting when he pushes Nicke’s hair behind his ear, his fingertips a ghost of a touch to his jaw as he pulls his hand away. 

It’s almost funny, but it’s not funny at all, when Nicke licks his lips nervously hours later and catches Sasha staring again. Not funny in the slightest.

 

The strangest thing is, Nicke’s not opposed to it, really. It’s not like he hasn’t considered it, hasn’t watched Sasha skate, watched Sasha get a drop of water on his lip and suck it off absentmindedly. He’s gotten distracted, caught up in fantasies over breakfast, watching Sasha’s throat move as he drinks his coffee. 

Nicke notices things. He’s supposed to. It’s normal.

 

Some nights he wondered what was more selfish, wanting Alex for himself, or wanting everything, wanting more than anything to lay claim on Alex, on Sasha, on everything he can’t have. 

There are rules Nicke can’t understand, but sharing doesn’t seem selfish at three in the morning. 

 

“You love him, don’t you?” Sasha asks from the kitchen doorway, and Nicke almost drops the plate he’s grabbing from the cupboard. 

“Who?” Nicke asks in turn.

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re here, aren’t you?” Sasha says, taking a step further into the kitchen. It’s a point of pride that Nicke doesn’t step back from the advance. 

Nicke sighs, folds his arms over his chest. He’s sure the therapist Kris made him talk to would say something about defensiveness, closing himself off when he needs to be open. Fuck that. 

“It’s Alex,” he says, quiet, always quiet with him and Sasha. And maybe that’s a kind of loving, when you can be so separate, so quiet and still understand. “Everyone loves him.”

Sasha takes another step, like he’s trying to back Nicke against the counter. It’s a vulnerable position to be in, but he lets Sasha put him there. Maybe that’s love, too; Vulnerable but safe, reassuringly exposed. 

“It’s different, maybe,” Nicke continues, clearing his throat. “But it’s still love.”

“Why’d you come here?” Sasha asks with another step, and brings his hand to rest on Nicke’s cheek before he can reply. “You love him.”

“I love him,” Nicke says it like a secret, and it is, it’s a stupid little secret that everyone knows. Standing here in the expensive kitchen of Alex’s expensive house, Alex’s expensive life, Sasha’s palm cupping his cheek, Sasha’s fingers pushing his hair back, the thought of Alex between them nearly as overwhelming as the reality of it al. 

“I love him,” Nicke repeats, reverent with Sasha’s touch. “But you love him too. Love him more, love him right.”

“It’s not a fucking contest, Nicke,” Sasha whispers, and Nicke knows he’d step closer if there was any space left between them. 

“You’d win,” Nicke says, and Sasha kisses him. 

It’s - well. 

It’s a meeting of two equal forces, two satellites coming together in their mutual orbit, it’s a wall breaking, a new old thing that’s just starting and been around for centuries. Bordering on glorious, the delight of contact, distracting Nicke from nagging thoughts of why it feels good, why he’s been tense enough to lean into the slightest touch for a month and why he’s giving in to the feeling of Sasha’s mouth on his own. He lets himself have this, hands in his hair, the push and pull of human touch. 

Sasha bites at Nicke’s lip, tugs at the hair between his fingers, drags his other fingers down the front of his neck and pulls at the collar of his shirt, and Nicke has to push him away just to get a goddamn breath. 

“You love him,” Sasha says one last time, inches from Nicke’s face, his tone and everything about him unfairly controlled. Nicke nods, looking away from Sasha’s neck, his mouth, his arms, so much skin, everything he wants to get his mouth on. 

Sasha kisses Nicke’s forehead, nothing more than a brutally gentle press of his lips, before he walks out of the kitchen and disappears for hours. 

 

“You seen Sasha today?” Alex asks over microwave dinners and American Ninja Warrior reruns, and Nicke nearly chokes on his steak. 

“He was here this morning,” Nicke says, feigning casual, like nothing’s ever happened out of the ordinary. “I think he went to the library, maybe. Some errands.”

Alex hums, nodding while he chews. Sometimes Nicke thinks he doesn’t know how captivating he can be, how insurmountable of a task it is to pay attention to stupid action movies and obstacle course shows when Alex is there, taking up every mental faculty. 

“I hope he gets himself dinner,” Alex concludes. “Fridge’s fuckin’ empty.”

“You know there’s an easy solution to that, right?” Nicke asks, drying his palms on the fronts of his jeans. 

“Grocery shopping is for idiots,” Alex says, putting his foot on the coffee table with the declaration, almost knocking over his glass of water. 

“So it’s a perfect fit for you,” Nicke says, flicking him in the knee. 

It’s not that the longing passes, but maybe the intensity has, even if just for a moment. 

 

In his dreams, Nicke is falling through space, through the deepest reaches of the void, the darkness you see out your bedroom window. Not falling as much as drifting, and in a second’s passing he’s standing in a doorway, facing Alex’s kitchen, but the microwave is made of a solar eclipse and the fridge is upside down and Sasha is pinning Alex up against the kitchen counter. It’s surreal in the most normal way, that way only dreams can make everything seem like it’s supposed to be this fucked up, except maybe Nicke’s life has become that way in general. Nothing is normal, but nothing needs to be changed.

In his dreams, Nicke watches as Sasha drags a needle sharp finger down Alex’s chest, slicing open the cheap fabric of his Coca Cola shirt. The point of Sasha’s finger slices through Alex’s chest, but it’s too perfect to be gory, glowing too much, too enthralling to be anything less than beautiful. Breaking Alex’s physicality down into desire. Breaking him down into cravings. He becomes a sum of his parts, but his parts are what Nicke wants, what Sasha wants, everything they need to say without saying anything. Nicke wants to ask - what’s left of Alex, he wants to ask if what’s left of Alex wants it too, if the desire in his flesh is his own or a collective of everyone else’s. He wants to ask, but his voice doesn’t come out right, and Alex still hasn’t stopped unravelling. 

It’s the kind of thing Nicke shouldn’t watch, can’t stop himself from watching, the slow detangling of everything. And within a second, he’s in a bedroom, watching Alex sprawled out on the bed, hands on his body, stroking the expanses of his skin, hands attached to nothing in particular. Maybe they’re Nicke’s hands, but maybe they’re Sasha’s, broader at the fingertips, brushing along the dip of Alex’s spine, Nicke’s hands with Sasha’s feeling everything all at once.

In dreams, Nicke sees what he truly wants, the selfishness of two for the price of none, Sasha’s hands on Alex’s hands on Nicke’s body.

He wakes up sweating, shaking, scared of all he could take if he let himself.

He wakes up wanting.

 

“Be quiet,” Nicke whispers into the semi-darkness of the second guest room, cutting off Sasha as he starts to speak. There’s the sound of Sasha fiddling with something by the bed, a quiet click before the bedside lamp fills the room with soft light. 

“What do you want?” Sasha asks, with Nicke standing in the doorway. He’s shirtless, sitting in bed with the comforter across his thighs. His skin looks smooth, soft in the dim glow of the lamp’s light, and Nicke wants to touch it, kiss his shoulders, bite his neck just to make him any less than perfect. As if that would change anything. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Nicke says, a non-response, a mostly unspoken prompt to do something. Sasha sits up a little against the headboard, a gesture, a welcome, an offering of pulled-back blankets as Nicke curls up next to him. 

 

He hasn’t considered it, not really. Abstract concepts are nothing like the reality of it, the raw, overwhelming satisfaction of getting even half of everything that he wants. 

 

“What do you think Alex would do? If he saw?” Sasha asks at five in the morning with Nicke straddling his hips, bitemarks down his chest. 

It’s not like Nicke hasn’t thought about it. The three of them. He can’t help himself sometimes.

“He’d be jealous,” Nicke says, tapping out a pattern against Sasha’s collarbones, one side at a time. He feels foolish, like he’s nineteen again, reckless and worked up in the middle of the night. “Jealous that I get to touch you too.”

Sasha’s quiet for a moment, just breathing, and Nicke grinds his hips down to try and get a rise out of him. All he gets for his efforts is a tightening of the hand Sasha keeps on his hip, and Sasha sighs. 

“We don’t do that,” Sasha says, his hand moving from Nicke’s hip to his ass. He can feel the heat of Sasha’s palm, even through his sweats. “This, any of this. Only once or twice with Alex, not again.”

“Why not?” Nicke asks, and he’s almost too curious, too broken by the similarities between them, to be turned on.

“Why don’t you?” Sasha asks in return, and Nicke digs his fingers into Sasha’s shoulders when he can’t answer. “We’re the same, Nicke. Not always, but sometimes. We get caught up in him, we look at him, come to fucking Moscow to be with him when the sky starts coming down. But we don’t get to be everything with him.”

Nicke kisses him, for lack of anything important to say. It’s a certain kind of devastating, seeing Sasha like this, seeing them both in the same state of longing.

Love could be this, Nicke thinks, when you both want something, so all encompassing, and end up wanting each other somewhere along the way. Maybe that’s where love comes from. 

“Alex should be jealous,” Nicke says against Sasha’s lips, just to feel him smile. 

 

They make it a whole of three days before Alex brings up the end of the world. It’s a nice dinner again, of course it is, and the difference in restaurant doesn’t make the feeling any different.

What’s different is Sasha, his hand on Nicke’s thigh under the table, his eyes doing that crinkly thing when he smiles at one of Alex’s jokes, their knees bumping together. 

“So,” Alex says like he’s holding court, a court of two people. Such goes the undivided attention of two half-lovers, never quite a whole. “The world’s gonna end. Thirteen more days.”

Sasha rolls his eyes, and it feels special. Like it’s only for Nicke to see. There’s a certain kind of joy to be had in moments like these, the quiet communication of two bodies alike in their longing. “What’s the plan?” He asks, years spent humoring Alex’s ideas.

“We’re gonna fucking party,” Alex says, so full of conviction that Nicke can’t help but laugh. “The three of us. Apocalypse rager dream team.” 

(That night, Nicke fucks Sasha like the world really is ending, pulls his hair like his damn life depends on it. Maybe it’s always been a love borne out of desperation. It’s fine if Nicke’s thinking about Alex being there with them, if Sasha’s thinking about Alex fucking him instead. None of this is gonna matter in two weeks, anyway.)

 

A week later Sasha kisses Nicke in the living room after dinner, and when Alex looks at them, the world could have ended in that second. 

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex asks later that night, with Sasha gone off to do whatever it is he does, and Nicke cornered in the kitchen again. It’s a familiar position of vulnerability, subliminal eroticism, with a significantly lower chance of good outcomes.

“Why the fuck do you need to know?” Nicke spits back, curling his fingers around the edge of the kitchen sink. “Not everything I do is your business, Alex.” 

“I think I deserve to know if my best friends are fucking in my guest room!” Alex half whispers, half shouts, like he doesn’t want to cause a scene. As if anyone would see, anyway. If he didn’t want a scene, he shouldn’t have started asking questions. 

“Why am I here, Alex?” Nicke interrupts, balling his fists to not look petulant, like that helps. He could say that he hates it when they’re like this, whatever this is. Hates it when they fight, but maybe they always fight. Maybe he hates it when he knows that he means it. “You - you called me, Alex. Every morning, you called me, asked me to come here. And I’m here. What do you want from me anymore? We aren’t - we aren’t stupid and nineteen anymore, we can’t just… whatever.”

“You’re here because I love you,” Alex says, foolish, always foolish. Of course it’s about him, it always is.

“I thought you wanted me,” Nicke says with a voice full of heartbreak, like some venom of misery dripping off his very words. “You called me. You tell me you love me, you confront me about my fucking sex life, what’s that supposed to tell me, Alex?”

“Do you remember the first game we played together, you and me?” Alex asks, and Nicke could hit him.

“What does this have to do with anything? Can we please,” Nicke says, voice almost breaking. “Can we please just stay on topic?”

“Do you remember it, Nicky?” Alex asks again, always patient, however little Nicke expects it. And that’s just another part of Alex, something that nobody sees, nobody knows about; they see Ovi, the Great Eight, the fearless leader. They never see him like this, fucking patient and infuriating and wonderful and absolutely life-ruining, leaning against his expensive empty fridge in his expensive empty house.

“I do,” Nicke says. “Of course I remember.”

“First game we had, I thought you were so mean. You were scary, you hated me for what happened at the draft-” 

“Don’t fucking bring that up,” Nicke says, furious, and Alex really looks at him for the first time since the argument started. “We were - fuck, Alex, I was nineteen! I was nineteen and stupid, I was a fucking idiot, and I... I fucked up. We can’t go back to that, I can’t fucking think about that and think about the you that I know now, the you that I love. It’s not like that anymore.”

“The first game, Nicky,” Alex says in as close as he gets to a whisper, still keeping his distance, across the kitchen. “You were on Sasha’s line, with Nylander. I know I wanted you, even just on my line, my center. I wanted you to be mine, Nicky. That game, you cussed a dude out in three different languages for boarding me. You put the fucking fear of god into this fucking vet, twenty years older than you at the least. And I think I fell in love with you.”

Nicke leaves without another word.

 

Nicke finds him in the little park down the street, a cigarette between his fingertips, propped up on his knee. It’s interesting, Nicke thinks, how someone as special as Sasha can look perfectly in place somewhere as normal as this; here in Moscow, sitting on a park bench at four in the morning, and nobody cares who they are. The sound of Nicke’s boots in the snow feels like a cacophony as he makes his way towards the bench. And maybe it means something that Sasha doesn’t turn to see who’s coming, maybe they’ve made it this far because they know each other already, because Nicke doesn’t need to ask first to find Sasha in the park in the middle of the night. 

“D’you talk to him?” Sasha asks as Nicke sits down next to him, shivers at the water drops on the bench. He’s not dressed for the weather, still hasn’t gotten used to Moscow winters, but he’ll never have to. It’s not like Moscow’s going to have another one, at least not while they’re all alive. There’s a certain sad humor to that, really, the world ending, everyone getting ready for the apocalypse and all Nicke can think about is the pain of loving without being loved. It feels selfish.

Nicke nods his head, squaring his shoulders nearly to his ears to brace against the cold. Sasha doesn’t push, doesn’t make him talk until he’s ready, and Nicke’s scared to say he might love that about him. “He got upset,” Nicke starts, watching the flex of Sasha’s hand in the dim light of the park lamps as he takes a drag. “We were both upset. He said… He said he loved me. That he was in love with me, once. Maybe not anymore, but he was.”

There’s a moment where they’re both silent, both still, before Nicke speaks again. “I love him.”

“We both do,” Sasha says, and he could be an old film star in this exact moment were he shot in black and white, all his features highlighted in the low light, cigarette held just past his lips like some caricature of long-suffering, a portrait of sorrow. The curve of his jaw, the gentle curl of his hair, and Nicke imagines it, the camera panning to the lover in the park, his face made up of fragments, pieces of his longing making a whole. Times like these, Nicke wishes people noticed more, wishes people would notice Sasha, the way he looks, the way he moves. Maybe Nicke notices enough for everyone. 

“The human condition,” Nicke remarks with a sad sort of smile, and Sasha offers him the cigarette. This is a sort of love, Nicke concludes time and time again, the companionable solitude they share, committed to yearning, committed to Alex in equal measure.

“I think I love you,” Sasha says later with Nicke’s head on his shoulder, snow coming down slow around them. 

“Does it matter?” Nicke asks, bitter and jaded and cold, wanting to be anywhere but here. “The world’s ending, Sasha, don’t you remember? Save your energy for something more worthwhile.”

“It is worthwhile,” Sasha says, and Nicke pulls down the collar of Sasha’s jacket to kiss his the soft skin of his neck. 

 

“I’m not mad at you,” Nicke tells Alex at the grocery store days later, somewhere between the produce section and wherever it is they’re going with what little’s left of their lives. “Not anymore.”

“That’s good,” Alex replies absentmindedly, scrolling through the shopping list. The store’s wiped out of a lot of what Nicke guesses is considered survival gear; matches, canned food. Shit they don’t need if they don’t plan on surviving. 

It almost feels secondary, like the end of the world is on the back burner, and Alex is his main focus. Just like he always is. And maybe they will survive this, maybe they’ll make it through the 21st alive and well and maybe they’ll be happy. Nicke isn’t exactly banking on their permanence.

“I think we should talk, when we get home,” he continues, watching Alex pull a box of some kind of discount cereal off the top shelf, put it in the cart. “Sasha too. Like a little house meeting.”

“Why?” Alex asks, examining the nutritional label of a different, more disgusting cereal, like calories and protein really matter anymore. It’s typical of Alex to want to leave a pretty corpse, but he’s pretty enough as is, there’s no way fruit loops could make the sight of him anything less than stunning. Nicke never was mad enough at him to stop seeing him for everything he is, gorgeous, so much strength and bravery and love, wrapped up in the nicest packaging Nicke could imagine. 

“I just feel like we have some things to talk about,” Nicke says, keeping his tone even, trying not to get nervous when Alex looks at him. He can command the attention of a room in a half a second, he demands so much attention, so much respect, but so can Nicke. They’re on even footing, here, in a Moscow grocery store with unreadable sale signs, three days before the end of the world.

 

“Do you really think it’s going to happen?” Nicke asks from the passenger seat, staring out the window as street signs pass. October feels like decades ago, only months passed since he sat down in this same seat and had a half dozen near revelations. 

“Can’t know for sure until it happens, yeah?” Alex replies, switching the radio station for the third time since they got in the car - he’s nervous. Nicke can tell, if nobody else can. Even the famed Alexander Ovechkin is afraid of dying, afraid of ultimatums, one or the other. The details, that’s where Nicke loses track. 

“I guess not,” Nicke says, glancing at Alex in the rearview; he looks tired, older. Nicke wonders how he’d look, six more years down the line, if they had six years. They being humanity, they being just the two of them. Maybe Alex will hate him after tonight, kick him out of the house for the last few days. He’d have to stay in some seedy hotel, and it feels like a miracle that businesses are still running, but people still need to eat. Nicke hopes that Sasha would come with him, at the very least. That they’d be exiled together for wanting too much. “I’m gonna miss you, Alex. When we’re gone.”

“Oh, bullshit, Nicky,” Alex says with a little laugh, his private laugh, the one he keeps locked up for moments like this with no cameras around. “I’ll die first and you’ll never have a migraine again. But I’ll come back, haunt your ghost. You won’t be lonely in hell.”

“Fuck off,” Nicke says, reaching out to swat Alex’s arm, and - saying he falls in love seems to invalidate all the thousands of other times he’s fallen in love with Alex. It just happens again, one last time. 

 

The 20th passes in a daze. Nicke wakes up at noon, and Alex has already left. He’s getting snacks for tonight, Sasha says, and Nicke kisses him against the kitchen counter like they’re in love, like they have all the time in the world. And they do, don’t they, even if all the time in the world is twelve more hours.

“I don’t want this to be over,” Sasha says when they’re on the couch, his head in Nicke’s lap, Nicke playing with his hair. It’s soft. 

“I don’t think anybody does,” Nicke says, watching the flickering light of the candle. It’s one of those fancy ones with the wood wicks, exactly the kind of thing Alex would spend his money on, and in the strangest way it makes Nicke want to cry. “Maybe there’s a cult somewhere who wants it. Some freaks who want the world to end.”

“Fuck them” Sasha says, and Nicke tugs on his hair, just for something to do. 

 

It’s only when Sasha’s outside, only then does Alex finally say anything to Nicke. They’ve talked, sure, but -

“I love you,” Alex says with his arm over the back of the couch, Nicke far too aware of it’s proximity to his neck. Everything boils down to that, the danger of proximity to a waiting body. 

“Do you really?” Nicke asks, taking such a gift of fondness in whatever form for granted, even now, hours before the world ends. “You can’t just joke about this, Alex.”

“I do,” Alex says, and it’s all Nicke can do not to flinch, not to flee from the rawness of Alex’s voice. It’s a scary thing, to witness another person’s longing. “I’m not joking. It’s never a joke with you, Nicky.”

“You know that I love you. You’d have to be foolish to not see,” Nicke says, looking anywhere but at Alex, anywhere but at everything he wants, everything might get to have. 

“Well maybe you’re a fool, Nicky,” Alex says with his hand too close to Nicke’s face, too close for Nicke to not want him closer. “You’re a fool to not know I want you too.”

Nicke sighs and thinks - what the fuck do you do, confronted with all this opportunity? What do you say when everything you’ve denied yourself for so long becomes so available?

“Christ,” he says, because what else is there, turning to face Alex. “Did it have to take the godforsaken apocalypse for you to tell me?”

For all his boldness, all the confidence and strength he exudes on the ice, Alex is shy. Nobody knows it, it’s the best kept secret in the whole damn team, but Alex is shy, he’s nervous, and he hates not getting what he wants, and - Nicke can give him what he wants.

Alex’s lips part under Nicke’s almost immediately, and he gets his hands in Nicke’s hair, and Nicke can tell that Alex has thought about this. There’s no upper hand, no advantage to be had, just the push and pull of two people wanting one another so badly. 

Alex pulls Nicke’s hair and, well, maybe there’s a little room for imbalance here when his knees go the slightest bit weak. 

For the longest time it feels like just the two of them, like they’re alone in the house, like they’ve got days and years to work this out, to be together. It’s the first time that Nicke can feel shameless about it, his desire, the first time he can look at Alex and let himself want all that he’s wanted for so long. 

When Sasha comes back there’s no questioning it, no awkward glances, just Nicke pressing Alex into the back of the couch by his shoulders, Alex biting along his collarbone when the front door clicks shut. Nicke looks up, catches Sasha’s attention but Alex is too distracted to notice, and with every step Sasha takes Nicke gets more and more worked up, thinking about having everything, thinking about -

“Oh fuck,” Alex says from underneath Nicke, breathless and not amused. “Sanya, it’s not- fuck, fuck,” 

“Fucking finally,” Sasha says with a little sigh of relief, and Nicke has to hold back a laugh at the look on Alex’s face. “Thought the world was gonna end before you morons got around to this.”

Nicke sits up with his knees bracketing Alex’s thighs, Alex’s fingers gripping his waist, and he tugs Sasha closer by the collar of his shirt. It’s ridiculously satisfying, the way Alex’s grip tightens when Sasha leans into it, puts his arms around Nicke’s neck. There’s a sort of natural feeling to it, like it’s the perfect combination, like they were meant to be together. Nicke’s been thinking it forever, even if he’s never acknowledged it.

“Fuck,” Alex says and Nicke turns to look at him, and for once he knows exactly how he looks, how he’s making Alex feel with his hair a mess, lips spit slicked and swollen from Sasha’s teeth. Alex looks nearly reverent, like the two of them are the most gorgeous thing in the world, like he’s caught up in the spectacle, and Nicke has to kiss the look off his face to not be overwhelmed by the admiration.

 

In November, if someone had told Nicke where he’d be given a month’s time, he would have laughed. Nonetheless, he finds himself sprawled on Alex’s couch in the evening of the end of the world. It feels like days passing spent lying on his back, the collar of his sweater all messed up. He’s almost jealous of Alex’s proclivity for partial undress.  
He’s finally willing to admit an appreciation of said tendency when Alex tugs off his own shirt and Nicke gets to watch as Sasha curls against his chest, kisses the line of his shoulders. Nicke gets to watch all of it, everything he’s wanted for so long coming together before his eyes, under his fingertips. So he spends the evening with Sasha laying half across his lap, kisses growing softer but no less passionate in the hazy evening sun that filters through the balcony window. 

There’s a strange amount of time to let pass between the present and the end, and somewhere along the line Sasha and Alex get in a mid-kiss argument about soccer, culminating in a very impromptu FIFA match. As far as Nicke knows, the prize is probably a blowjob or something, so. It’s not like he can complain about watching any of it. 

 

They’re in bed closing in on midnight, and it’s the most comfortable place Nicke could imagine dying.

Alex isn’t as prone to excess as the media loves to paint him, like an old painting of a duke in an extravagantly furnished palace, his house his nearly empty in contrast (it was, Nicke thinks, but it’s grown - there’s an ashtray on the front porch table, more than one pair of shoes by the door, clothes in the closets, the breakfast bars Sasha loves in the cupboard. It’s lived in now, loved in). Despite his sparesty in decoration, Alex is anything but averse to comfort. The bed is large enough to fit all of them, and Nicke wonders how planned that was, the extra pillows piled by the headboards, far more than a reasonable number of throw blankets because Nicke always gets cold. It’s all planned, it has to be.

It’s like the saddest possible New Year’s Eve party, really, lovers in a Moscow bedroom ringing in the end of the world. Alex has an alarm for 11:45pm set on his phone, and Nicke hasn’t seen his phone in four days, because none of that’s going to matter in seventeen minutes. The apocalypse is as good a reason as any to lose something as useless as his phone.

“What are we gonna do?” Sasha asks, his head resting on Nicke’s chest, and Alex reaches out to brush his cheek from Nicke’s other side. 

“We’re gonna wait, I guess,” Nicke says, tangling his fingers in Sasha’s hair while he watches the clock across the room. It’s 11:39, and he wishes he could sleep through it. Wake up when the world’s over, wake up when everything’s gone dark. When they’re already dead. 

Alex says nothing and Nicke kisses his forehead, pushes his hair back from his eyes and pulls them both closer to wait it out.

 

When the clock strikes 11:55, it’s overwhelming to think of in terms of saying goodbye, but Nicke brushes the tears from Alex’s cheeks when he kisses him for the last time, too gentle to be anything but final. He watches as Sasha kisses Alex in turn, whispering something into his ear that nearly makes Alex smile, and it’s devastating in it’s own way. As much as it hurts Nicke, he sees the sorrow painted on Sasha’s face, everything he’s wanted given and taken in turn within hours. It hurts to watch, to see all that love plain in Alex’s eyes, knowing it’ll all be over given a moment’s notice.

Nicke kisses Sasha last and it feels like an apology, begging forgiveness for never noticing one another, too caught up in Alex to see what was there all along. It feels like an apology, and it feels like a promise, like they’ll find each other again, somehow. They all will.

 

At 11:59 Nicke holds his breath, and knows that it’ll be his last. 

 

The clock across the room flicks to midnight, and Nicke wishes he had a god he could talk to, somebody he could beg for help, beg for more time. But the clock across the room shows midnight, and the world doesn’t come shattering down around them. There’s no blast of light, no shifting of the earth, no cataclysmic event killing every organism. 

It’s quiet save for the breathing, the shuffling sound of bodies on bedsheets. It’s dark in the bedroom, and Nicke feels Sasha’s face hot against his shoulder, Alex’s stubble scratching against his upper arm. It’s dark, it’s silent, and they’re alive.

Alex starts to laugh. It starts out small until he’s nearly wheezing with it, and Sasha buries his face in Nicke’s shoulder, where Nicke can feel him grinning. And Nicke can’t help himself, can’t waste his time wondering why, and he holds Alex and Sasha closer and kisses them both just as much as the other, and they’re living, living, living. 

They live.

 

Some time later this will be something they laugh about. Someday they will tell their teammates how they learned to love each other when the sky was falling, and someday Nicke will blush and hide a smile in his wine glass when Alex jokes about it. Years down the line, Sasha will look at him across the table while Alex tells the story of them, and Sasha will smile and Nicke won’t bother hiding his love. 

Somewhere there’s a line between longing and loving, and it’s irrelevant, and a body that’s longing can be a body that’s loving all at once.

“Nicky’s dick stopped the world from ending,” Alex says to teammates in the backroom of the bar in Nicke’s visualization of the future. Sasha is there, maybe visiting, maybe back with them. Alex makes his grand claim and Nicke tells him to shut up, sit down, don’t be so crude. 

Somewhere in the future this can be a joke, a funny story, and Alex will make his jokes and Nicke will tell him to calm down, and Sasha will be there to share that old look with, to link his fingers with on the seat between them while Alex tells everyone the story of how they loved through the end of the world. 

They’ll be together, and everyone will know that they were in love. Everyone will know that they still are, that they always have been. 

 

Somewhere in the future, Sasha goes home, the lockout ends, they go back to Washington and Alex tells the story of their love. Greenie laughs at Nicke, and they’re happy, they’re all happy and alive and surviving. 

Sasha comes home, eventually. Back to Washington. Back to Nicke and Alex, to their big house in Arlington, and he kisses Nicke against the kitchen counter the first night back just like he did all those years ago, so far from home.

They’re alive, and they’re in love, and they always have been, no matter where.

 

The world didn’t end on December 21st. But maybe, Nicke thinks, foolishly sentimental watching the sunrise through their curtains, it started again.


End file.
